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Unless you’ve been in hiding for the past 40 years, chances are you know what homophobia means.

The same can’t be said for biphobia.

Simply put, biphobia is when people are prejudiced towards bisexuals.

It’s pretty similar to homophobia, except people often aren’t aware it’s happening.

Bisexuals often face added discrimination from people within the LGBT community as well as discrimination from heterosexual people.

Chances are you will have seen biphobia on TV or heard someone make a biphobic comment without even realising it.

Ever heard someone jokingly say bisexuals are greedy?

That’s biphobia.

Or that bisexuals should make up their minds?

Biphobia strikes again.

A prime example of biphobia is the now famous Vogue interview with Cara Delevingne where the interviewer Rob Haskell wrote: ‘Her parents seem to think girls are just a phase for Cara, and they may be correct.’

Perhaps one of the most patronising phrases a bisexual will ever hear is ‘just a phase.’

Those three little words have huge power.

They place doubt over that person’s sexuality.

They treat that person as a child who can’t possibly know who they are attracted to and they put that person’s entire identity into question.

Yes, it’s true that for some bisexuality is a phase, an exploration of their sexuality, or a security blanket for some lesbians and gay men as they start to come out of the closet.

But to suggest that every bisexual is just in a phase is ridiculous and completely undermines thousands of people’s sense of identity – at a great cost.

Dr Siri Harrison, a clinical psychologist, said: ‘When people feel entitled to degrade or dismiss an aspect of someone, that person feels shame.’

Dr Harrison says she sees this shame manifested into low self esteem, anxiety and depression in some of her bisexual clients at her London practice.

A huge problem is that bisexuals don’t just face this dismissive attitude from straight people, it comes from within the LGBT community too, who sometimes forgets that the B stands for bisexual and is there for a reason.

This attitude is perfectly illustrated in The L Word, the TV show that put LGBT relationships at the forefront of popular culture for the one of the first times back in 2004.

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In this scene Dana (lesbian) asks Alice (bisexual) to make up her mind about her sexuality:

Dana: Christ, Alice, when are you going
to make up your mind between dick and pussy? And spare us the gory bisexual
details, please.
Alice: Well, for your information, Dana, I’m looking for the same qualities
in a man that I am in a woman.

While Alice in the show has a quick comeback and appears confident with her identity, not everyone is so self assured in the real world.

Even people who feel entirely comfortable in their skin would find it difficult to live with a continuous onslaught from friend and foe, gay and straight, demanding you to pick a side and be someone you’re not.

Priya Francome-Wood, a masters student in Brighton, has found this demand to choose a preference difficult.

Francome-Wood told Metro.co.uk: ‘I get a lot of “you just haven’t made up your mind yet” or “so are you gay or straight?”’

She added: ‘Personally, I have found myself saying I am either a lesbian or straight in many, many situation as, from my experience, it is much more accepted (by both gay and straight communities) to be one or the other but not bi.’

For many it is easier to show only one part of their sexuality than to live with the consequences of showing their whole selves.

Francome-Wood remembers one particularly offensive comment said to her in reference to her being bi: ‘One [comment] that particularly stung was at Pride, being told that I wasn’t to celebrate as much as everyone else because it was only half my day.’

Dr Harrison explained the psychology behind why some people find it so hard to accept bisexuality: ‘The human brain wants to categorise people and concepts neatly away, and socially we like to fully understand, without thinking too hard, in black and white.’

She continued: ‘When we can’t comprehend things easily it becomes a grey area not easily categorised. People don’t like to sit with their own discomfort so push it back on the person it comes from.’

Simply put, people are more ready to accept a person as homosexual as it fits neatly into a binary of straight and gay, but bisexuality is harder to define.

Many bisexuals find their attraction to men and women is quite fluid and changes over time.

Some people struggle with not being able to categorise that person and so deflect their own discomfort on to them.

This is where negative stereotypes of bisexuals as greedy and promiscuous come from.

These are not just joking terms – they can have a real effect on the person they are aimed at, as The Bisexuality Report found.

The Open University and BiUK looked at national and international data, talked with therapists and bisexuals to form The Bisexuality Report.

The findings were alarming:

Of all the larger sexual identity groups, bisexual people have the worst mental health problems, including high rates of depression, anxiety, self harm and suicidality. This has been found both internationally and in the UK specifically, and has been strongly linked to experiences of biphobia and bisexual invisibility.

Jokes about being ‘greedy’ don’t seem quite so funny when it’s been shown that bisexual men are 6.3 times more likely, and bisexual women 5.9 times more likely to commit suicide than heterosexual people.

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It also impacts on physical health because some bisexuals are not getting appropriate health care and sex education because they are too scared to tell their health practitioner about their sexual identity. And some practitioners treat bisexuals as gay, not giving important advice on birth control and family planning.

Torchwood’s Captain Jack Harkness played by John Barrowman (Picture:BBC)

Dr Harrison says: ‘Bisexuality is not pathologically or psychologically a problem as an orientation, but the prejudice directed at it from other people can manifest as one.’

However, there is good news: popular culture is starting to include more positive portrayals of bisexual characters, like Torchwood’s Captain Jack Harkness.

And The Bisexuality Report found: ‘Bisexual people reported that they felt freedom from the social binaries of gay/straight and male/female.

This meant that they thought that they were more able than others to develop identities which felt right for them, and to form relationships without restrictions around who they could be attracted to.’

Many linked this to a sense of independence, self-awareness and authenticity.

Biphobia needs to be recognised in the same way as homophobia and only with continued cultural awareness will we see a change in those alarming health statistics.